An Bord Pleanála

Big it up for An Bord Pleanála, which has turned down the proposal that a giant alien spaceship be allowed to land near the Blessington Street Basin, just off the Broadstone Line of the Royal Canal. The Irish Times and the Sunday Business Post have both used an artist’s impression of the ghastly object, which is intended to be a children’s hospital, but I can’t find who owns the image so I can’t ask for permission to use it.

If only we had a similar body assessing other investment proposals like those for, say, the Clones Canal. The proponents of both projects argue in similar ways: we have a report, we have experts, it’s time to move on, shut up and give us the money. That both projects are insane — because, apart from being unaffordable, they ignore likely user experiences — is irrelevant to the proposers: their strategy is not to come up with the best (or even a reasonable) allocation of public money but to force through their projects in their currently proposed form. Only German politicians can save us (and our money) from these people; perhaps Germany would like a seventeenth (or eighteenth, after Greece) Land?